Bowl of Oranges
by Synonym
Summary: And a thousand times over again. Yamamoto x Gokudera.


They fall in love at the wrong times.

* * *

It happens to Gokudera one day, while he's wandering through Namimori. There are sakura blossoms on the trees, there's a loud shopping district moving around him. Every word spoke in the crowds is Japanese, and he understands it better than he worries he might ever have understood Italian. (His mother and a book of Japanese basics comes to mind, her making faces while she pronounced syllables at a time, slow and bubbling with laughter, and she picked him up and grinned, _that's right, that's right._)

Japan is inviting, Japan welcomes him with everything Italy shunned him from. Japan is sunlight and fireworks, it's warm and icy breezes are scarce, from a forgotten home. (Mothers and fathers gone, and sisters he can't stand the sight of.) Japan is where he finds his family, where he belongs.

Yamamoto falls in love with everything, over and over. Yamamoto loves Japan and Italy, the way Gokudera sometimes muddles and crisscrosses his languages, hates the way something about pasta and pizza makes him long for Takesushi and his father – but that all comes _after._

When he's fourteen and a decade further, in the Vongola base, it's all he thinks about. He misses his father, pictures him confused at the disappearance, pictures him that worriless way he always is, laughing and betting his son is on some boyhood adventure, misplaced the letter goodbye, misplaced a hug and a thousand apologies. That's how Yamamoto finds himself desperately wishing it is, an entire world away.

It's one night, after they first fought in the Milliefiore base. Yamamoto is on the railing of the bunk bed, overlooking Gokudera's bunk, where he's moody and under the covers, pretending to be asleep to get the idiot away. Yamamoto smiles when Gokudera opens one eye.

"I miss it," he says quietly, still smiling, but more serious than he's sure Gokudera's ever heard him before. (This Yamamoto hadn't apologized to this Gokudera about things he couldn't control, though. Things the real blame for was shared, between two old, old and tired men and not these children trying on their shoes.) Yamamoto's voice breaks, subtly, but he still smiles. "I miss home."

Gokudera's eyes open, widen. He bites his bottom lip to keep from frowning, and for the hundredth time since they've been in this hollow base of ghosts and shattered salvation, his heart sinks with guilt. "Soon," he manages, throat dry. He looks Yamamoto in the eye, feeling like the positions are meant to be switched - he can barely comfort himself. "We'll be home soon."

And then Yamamoto falls in love again.

* * *

The minute they return to the past, Yamamoto spares no time. Takesushi was closed; he makes out his father washing dishes through the glass of the door. He hesitates, slightly, wonders if he should check his hair or hide his scars. He hears the figure of his father humming, like he does when they're both in the kitchen, both of them do, and he can't stand it any longer. He throws the doors open and speeds inside. He grabs onto his fathers shoulders, embraces him over the countertop.

"Takeshi," his father breathes, and Yamamoto's voice quakes how familiar it sounds, inhales every second of this, home and the smell of sushi, the sound of baseball from the television in the other room.

"Dad," he mutters, and he refuses to let go.

When Gokudera comes home, it's surprisingly mundane. He spends a while in an empty apartment, cleaning himself up properly, spends two or so hours bitching over the smell that his absence ushered in, then gives up, and goes for a walk outside.

Namimori is quiet at night. He finds his way to the park on autopilot, and comes across the Tenth and the kids. Lambo and I-pin haven't changed in the least since they returned, are still spending every moment of their lives fooling around and dragging the Tenth down into some hair-pulling, insanity-inducing mess. And Tsuna doesn't look half bothered by it, then.

"Don't touch that," he says to Lambo once, without even a threatening tone, and the kid drops it that easily; just like that. Tsuna smiles at Gokudera, who feels a little elated at how normal everything finally seems, and smiles back haltingly. He drops into the swing beside the Tenth, some far away part of him still exhausted – now, wide awake for the first time in weeks.

The chains of Tsuna's swing all clink when he makes to kick off, and they clatter straight again when Gokudera can't not interrupt, can't bottle it inside any longer, as painfully disrespectful as it is.

"Aren't you still worried?"

It comes out panicked and hushed, so the kids don't hear a word. Gokudera can't stop going over it in his mind, the Tenth's death, if they'd really changed it. If it was still inevitable, still creeping behind them and waiting to make them go through it all a third time. Gokudera is so sore, so frantically aware that he wouldn't be able to stand it.

But the Tenth turns to him and grins, a little sheepish, right after it's said. "No, not really," he answers, that easily. Just like that. He does start swinging this time, swaying back and forth slightly. "I mean," he starts, and looks suddenly deeply embarrassed, "I have you guys, right?"

It doesn't need to be said that this is why Gokudera loves the Tenth. He has no worries now, laughs a little to himself and kicks off the ground.

* * *

Something Yamamoto adores: baseball. Something Yamamoto adores even more: persuading Gokudera into watching a game. It's taken a lot of experience, a lot of brazen action, and skill Yamamoto doesn't know he was in possession of, but Gokudera is finally watching a match – willingly. He checks his watch furiously every minute or two, but it's still a success to Yamamoto.

He makes a point to make sure that Gokudera understands completely everything happening in the game, until he's been cuffed over the head three times in a row. "I _know _what happens in baseball, dumbfuck. You talk about it non-stop, _some_ of the drone was bound to get through." Then Gokudera had hisses warningly at him, steals some food off his plate quick. "Can't we just watch the game?"

Yamamoto squeaks-

("… are you a fucking –")

-and he kisses Gokudera without a second thought.

* * *

"I still remember a few songs," Bianchi murmurs to him, and her hands brush her brothers over the keys. She's wearing a thick pair of sunglasses that block half her face, and Gokudera suddenly remembers the little girl with scabbed little knees and the potential to be a world-class chef. Thinking of her food and sitting so close to a piano makes him feel uneasy, but he stands it. He remembers when they were kids, poking wrong keys and having to sit on her lap to reach them at all. "Your mother used to play this for you," she says, and it scares him that she doesn't falter her speech at all, that she expects him to stand that too. He's angry, abruptly. He wants to tell her off for _something_, warn her and overcome the sickness and - then she starts playing.

"Do you remember it, Hayato?" she says in Italian, and he phases out of one world and into the other when he hears her playing. He swallows, nods. He wonders how his sister can play it so perfectly.

* * *

"She's beautiful," Yamamoto says.

Gokudera takes the picture from his hands and breathes it in, an image he'd almost forgot. "Yeah," he breathes, and something about Yamamoto speaking like she's still here at all, any way, shape or form, makes his heart soar and the situation much easier. "She is."

* * *

It's their first time in Italy. Yamamoto sits with his back to Gokudera's, trying to match the straight posture he's sure Gokudera's usual slouch is straining from. His chin falls to his chest and his eyes flutter shut while he listens, and Gokudera keeps saying, "I haven't played in years", and "I don't remember…"

"Amazing," Yamamoto assures him after a while, voice deep and throaty. That's what he says when Gokudera translates the Takesushi menu, what he says when Gokudera calculates algebra homework in his head and what he says after they kiss, if Gokudera is in a good mood and unlikely to smack him.

He turns himself around to curve over Gokudera's back, smiles when he feels Gokudera tense, catches him blush. He watches Gokudera's hands on the keys, swift and elegant. He watches the focused expression on Gokudera's face, listens intently until it ends and Gokudera nudges his shoulder, the one Yamamoto was leaning on, with something like a smile.

He says, "I'm glad you're an idiot. You didn't hear the mistakes." And then he pushes Yamamoto off.

* * *

Gokudera finds himself content in Italy on the trip, which is solely for tourism. Gokudera winces when Reborn speaks the word, grins when the Tenth says it's a good idea. He remembers Italy perfectly, remembers how it had cast him aside and nights spent in the Ninth's Vongola base, pouring over Japanese textbooks, feeling outcasted and rejected. He remembers that his old home isn't too far from here, and feels sick with dread, because it seems like something Reborn would have him go through.

"I always get homesick in Japan," Dino says to him, and it's cheerful, a serious undertone. (In a different world, they might know each other better, when Gokudera was a survivor in a deserted base and having sobbing fits between cigarettes, when they'd took well to each others shoulders, missing bosses and brothers.)

"I never thought about it before." Because he doesn't dare, in case he _did_ become homesick, did long for somewhere that saw his departure to the end.

Dino takes them all to a restaurant, and there's a mild mishap during ordering because they have to translate and everyone just notices Dino's shoddy Japanese skills. Gokudera takes one look at the menu and has never felt so hungry, has to make working on his napkin to see which combination would make the most delicious, and when he figures it out, all the surrounding tables are complaining about the family arguing over dinner in three different languages. I-pin began yelling in the midst of it, too.

When it's over, Basil and Gokudera share the job of telling the waiter.

"_Spaghetti,_" Yamamoto reads slowly, and Gokudera can hear him from the other side of the table, and he laughs to himself.

* * *

(Most of him hates it. His father constantly attempts to meet him, perhaps wanting reconcile, perhaps wanting forgiveness, perhaps wanting to rub Gokudera's shitty childhood in his face. A part of his is scared it has something to do with his mother, and he's pushing it away without knowing. A part of him thinks of his father as ugly, ugly, ugly, and his mother as some beautiful, shining angel, but Gokudera did not see her in his last seconds, face through the glass and ribs through the lungs, clutching his present until it was drenched, bloody and insignificant. He hates Italy for keeping him in the past, with a family that wasn't a family.) This new Italy feels warmer, brighter. He doesn't miss it when he goes back to Japan.

* * *

One day, after they've come home, Tsuna loves everything. He comes into school, dreamy, an unmoving grin plastered on his face. His eyes are glued to Kyoko, and when he looks away, her eyes are glued to him. He's never loved high-school so much. When they both ask him what's happened all he says is, "Justice. Justice happened."

And Yamamoto understands instantly. It takes a red-faced explanation from Tsuna for Gokudera to understand, and at the horrible look of Gokudera's need for atonement when talking about it so plainly brings Tsuna down from his high, Yamamoto can't stop himself laughing through the whole class.

Yamamoto tells Gokudera he wants to love everything for a day, and Gokudera explodes at him for sounding so cheesy and thinking it would possibly work with him, a _guy. _"You already love everything," Gokudera tells him, sounding a little hysteric, but that doesn't stop Yamamoto pestering him long into the night, when it is wordlessly decided that Yamamoto is staying over.

"It doesn't work like that, idiot. You can't just think you can _annoy _my pants off, fucker."

But then it turns out he can.

* * *

Yamamoto skips when he's meant to sneak back to his house the next day. He dances around poles. Spares money for the poor, and when he runs out of that, he even hands one man his coat. He prances home, ridiculously happy, climbs in through his window, ridiculously happy. Then he lies in his bed, checks his watch, wonders if he can call Gokudera or sneak back to Gokudera's because the amount of love emitting from him was shameful to be wasted alone. So he makes some breakfast in his kitchen, leaves a note for his dad, and he prances back to Gokudera's apartment.

"Are you still in bed?" he asks, and he bets he sounds something like Ryohei, because he can't keep the love out of his voice, either.

Gokudera snatches the bag out of his hands, glowers at him. "Stop coming here," he snarls, sleepy. After he eats he doesn't complain, not even when Yamamoto lies next to him and turns his television to watch sports.

* * *

Yamamoto helps Tsuna pick out the ring. He even helps Tsuna with his nerves, tries to calm him down before the dinner. "It'll be fine," he says in a voice that feels like it'll be _fine. _Tsuna bites his bottom lip hard, shakily thanks Yamamoto and almost keels over four times on the way to the restaurant.

And of course, Kyoko says yes. They announce it like it's a huge surprise and nobody knew, and Haru and Bianchi are quick to look up bridal gowns and flowers, and Yamamoto sits with Tsuna, who's still in shock.

"I should call my mom," Tsuna breathes, but doesn't move to get up, doesn't seem to have that ability. Yamamoto almost feels bad that Gokudera's going to be hearing about this over the phone, too. "I. Just. Why did she say yes?"

Yamamoto laughs, glances over at where Kyoko, Haru, Bianchi and I-pin are all discussing the wedding and grinning. "That's obvious," he laughs.

* * *

Gokudera gets off of the plane. He smiles all the way into Namimori, even taps a tune on the steering wheel.

It's good to be home.

* * *

They don't say it often.

Yamamoto murmurs it, while he rubs soothing circles onto Gokudera's back, traces scars softly, with the tips of his fingers. Gokudera's says it a handful of times, sometimes drunk and strangely meaningful, sometimes breathed so quietly Yamamoto wonders if he missed it, if it was said at all. When he leaves for America, Gokudera murmurs it into his shirt at the airport, and Yamamoto says it back once – twice. It's significant, this way.

When Gokudera watches Yamamoto in his first game on the television, he feels it all over again.

* * *

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

**Author's Notes: **This is so gay, _ugh_. Imagine a whole fic dedicated to love, WHAT. I just want them to be happy, but then this went all WRONG IN THE MIDDLE and CONFUSED with a TTLY DIFFERENT STORY but then I thought nah, you know what, let's stick that in there. It's everyone and everything and everywhere they enjoy, because I'm sick of the L word right about now.

I JUST WANT THEM ALL TO BE HAPPY.

THIS IS SO GAY.

I don't normally babble in the AN but I really have no idea if I like this fic or loathe it. I love the gay in it. The fluff. But when I reread it some of it was angsty and I was so gutted, it was a really sad moment of my life. If someone could tell me if this is OOC I'd appreciate it. A hella lot. Shit, man. HELLA LOT.

Also, sorry if you weren't expecting 27K. IT'S SO CUTE THEY'RE LIKE BODY-SWAPS OF EACH OTHER.

(Also, title stole from Bright Eyes song. The one that isn't totally depressing.)

**Thanks for reading. **Really. And if you read the AN, sorry 'bout that.


End file.
